16.9.12

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the
child reaches 2 to 6 years of age. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds. If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will
spend an average of 6 months waiting at red
lights.A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a
second.An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. A snail can sleep for three years. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. Butterflies taste with their feet.If the population of China walked past you, in single file the
line would never end because of the rate
of reproduction. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite. The Bible does not say there were three wise men; it only says
there were three gifts. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a
radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his
pocket.There are more chickens than people in the world. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance. Women blink nearly twice as much as men. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two
weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.

America
might not be as influential in the world as it used to be. The times
when ‘Coca Cola’ stood for a whole culture have long gone. And
economically the US is still the biggest economy, but serious
competitors have entered the scene, like China, for example.

England used to be a world power, but that is something you’d find in
history books by now. However, both countries have left their imprint on
the world as we know it, and that’s why we find that English is still
the most important language in the world, in terms of its use and by
how many people speak it.

German, the language of war, French, the language of diplomacy, and
English for all there is under the sun. Foreigners meeting abroad try
English first when they want to communicate; it is not at all uncommon
to find two German tourists in the Czech Republic starting to talk
English to each other until they find out that they are from the same
country.

But most importantly English has been, is now and
most likely will continue to be the language of commerce. This is why
students all over the world, be it in Latin America, Africa or China,
want to learn English. Their job prospects increase dramatically when
they can show in their curriculum that they speak English. And this is
why there are always openings for English teachers all over the world.

The market for teaching English as a second language has become kind of
crowded of late, to say the least. More people want to learn it, and
more Americans or other English speakers want to teach it. This is one
interesting aspect of that particular market: you have a good chance
of getting into it even if you don’t have prior experience as a
teacher.

I’m not referring here to teaching jobs as let’s say a second grade
teacher in a private school. There you will be asked for qualifications.
I’m referring here to commercial institutes that cater to the needs
of foreign and multinational companies that want to teach their staff
to answer a fax in English, or attend to some supervisor in the home
office.

Mind you, the times where it was just enough to be American in order to
land a teaching job have long gone. You will have to meet certain
requirements, but they are relatively easy. For one, you have to be
‘teach-able’. That means that most serious institutes around the world
want motivated and skilled staff, and are willing to send them
initially through a training program of their own.

Since staff turnover in these institutes is pretty high, they want to
recover what they invested in your training by paying you a low salary
first. Since most people drop out after a couple of month that makes
sense for the language school. But you can be pretty sure that if you
hang in there and do a good job, you will a. be allocated more classes,
and therefore more pay, and b. your hourly rate will go up.

It’s not absolutely necessary, but it does help a lot
if you have experience in general business matters, or if you have
worked in a corporation yourself. Because you will find that your
students are not so much interested in learning English, but to improve
their communication skills. There is a fine difference. If they’re
able to service a client better because of their command of English,
that gives them a better standing with their company and better
prospects for promotions. And if you as the teacher can focus on those
phrases that are used in negotiations, for example, or in sales
presentations, that would help both you and your students. But again, it’s not absolutely necessary.

7.9.12

A nasty thing that can happen while you are working on a translation
is for your computer to crash. Depending on how much of your work you
have saved previously you might lose a good chunk of your translation.
Imagine you have been hammering away for the past 90 minutes, and a
storm knocks out your power supply - it's extremely frustrating to do
the same job over....

In Word there is a setting called
'autosaving' where the document you are working on saves itself every X
minutes. You can adjust it by going to Tools>Options>Save
Tab> and then select "Save Autorecover Info" every X minutes. I
suggest you select 10 minutes. This way, should your computer crash, you
lose a maximum of 10 minutes of your work.

You can do it as well manually by pressing "Control S", which works for most programs you might be working with.

6.9.12

It's a fact of life, computers do crash. Or they get attacked by a malignant software or a virus.

Now, imagine you are working on a dissertation, written by a Mexican student in Spanish. She is applying for a scholarship at a renowned English university to do a master, and you are translating her work into English.

There are a total of 60 pages, you are halfway through and 'bang' - your computer crashes. AND you forgot to back up your files...........

You don't want that to happen to you, believe me. You might have lost there 20 hours of work, and you have to start all over.

So always make copies of your documents (the originals and the translations), and make them OUTSIDE your PC. What I mean is keep those copies on a floppy disc or a USB stick. That way if your computer does crash it at least doesn't make you lose all the time and effort you have invested until that point.

5.9.12

I once translated a series of letters that were written at the beginning of the 20th century. They were sent from Indonesia to Germany, by a German lady working as a missionary.

When I was approached for the job the first thing I did, before anything else, was to ask for sample letters. My client scanned them and sent them to me via .pdf files.

The letters themselves were of a personal nature, so there weren't any technical or legal terms to deal with.

However, they were hand-written, and at times illegible.

So even though the material itself represented no challenge (they were written, after all, in my mother language), I had to invest a lot of time literally deciphering whole passages, and sometimes deducing the meaning of words through context.

When pricing the job I had to obviously take into account the time it would take me not to translate, but to read the original.

My suggestion here is that you NEVER accept a job unless you have seen beforehand what it is about.

4.9.12

Working as a translator you will spend a lot of time in front of your computer monitor.

That can take its toll on your eyes (they may start to hurt), or you might get a headache. It's therefore imperative that you adjust your monitor's settings to a level that's comfortable for you.

By default everybody seems to view black text on documents with white background. That makes sense if you want to print out the document, since color cartridges are pretty expensive. But that doesn't mean that you have to work with a setting like that.

Your eyes might like it better when they work with white text on blue background, or a green background with a yellow text. Find out, experiment.

The process might take time, but remember, you have to do it only once.